Advanced energy storage materials contain a significant amount of energy. Engineers design protective shrouds to prevent penetration of the battery compartments and the resulting electrical shorting. This electrical shorting spontaneously discharges the battery releasing all the energy at once causing a significant amount of local heating. When the heating is above the ignition temperature of the aprotic flammable organic electrolyte the electrolyte will catch on fire causing personnel or property damage. These fire events limit market penetration of advanced high energy batteries and limit energy storage applications. The remote chance of such an event must be eliminated to ensure consumer confidence and development of new devices/applications.
There is disclosed in U.S. Pat. No. 9,590,274 issued Mar. 7, 2017 a passively impact resistant composite electrolyte composition includes an electrolyte solvent and an electrolyte salt, and shear thickening ceramic or polymeric particles having a polydispersity index of no greater than 0.1, an average particle size of in a range of 50 nm to 1 μm, a BET surface area in the range of 1-100 m2/g, and a method to stabilize the particles against flocculation. The stabilization process shown in US Publication No. US 2017/0104236 includes sterically stabilizing the particles with a chemically bound polymer coating. The disclosures of these references are incorporated fully by reference.